Cape Town - The Western Cape government says it will officially kick off its phase 2 vaccine rollout on May 17 to October 30.
Head of health in the Western Cape Dr Keith Cloete said from May 17 onwards they would want everyone who is over the age of 60 to be registered on the Electronic Vaccination Data System (EVDS).
“We will complete the remainder of the healthcare workers firstly, so that by the 17th of May we would officially kick off the formal part of our big vaccination drive aimed at the general population.
“We will continue to communicate to the Western Cape public on how this process will unfold,” said Cloete.
Currently in the Western Cape, there are 12 active cases of healthcare workers opposed to the over a thousand positive cases in January.
In December 2020, during the height of the second wave, over 1 971 healthcare workers were infected with the virus. This dropped to its lowest level since the pandemic started in March last year, with just 38 infections last month.
Cloete said this was a sign the vaccination programme is protecting healthcare workers against contracting Covid-19.
He also mentioned that the province will be able to cover more than 60% of healthcare workers in the province from the doses they received from Sisonke.
As of April 13, over 53 000 healthcare workers had been vaccinated in the Western Cape.
Phase 2 will run concurrently with Phase 1, which prioritises the vaccination of approximately 1.2 million healthcare workers (HCW) in both the public and private healthcare sectors.
To date, almost 300 000 healthcare workers have been vaccinated under Phase 1A of the programme, conducted through the Sisonke implementation study, which targets 500 000 HCWs for vaccination.
The balance of HCWs will be vaccinated with commercially procured vaccines outside of study conditions. This rollout will be faster, as it will not require the extensive reporting conditions of the Sisonke study, and will be available at significantly more vaccination sites.
Phase 3 will commence in November 2021 and is expected to continue for three months, ending in February 2022 and aims to cover 22.6 million people, the remainder of the target population.